Pedro Almodovar

In a place in La Mancha, whose name I want to remember is Calzada de Calatrava, not long ago (on September 25, 1951), a future film director was born, one of those spearheads in a shipyard and a traditional family. His father, Antonio, was a wine and oil seller, while his mother, Francisca, was a housewife. The fact that he studied in Cáceres at the Salesian school will play a fundamental role in his cinema, since although he assures everyone that he does not have a good memory of those years, the truth is that he has constantly portrayed popular religiosity, and he captured some memories of his stay in that center in Bad Education . From a very young age he developed an intense love of cinema, which made him devour film after film.

Declared homosexual, Almodóvar went to live in Madrid as soon as he could, a more permissive city than his hometown. There, he got an administrative job at Telefónica that made him bitter. In Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown –And in a tribute to his first period that he performs in Los abrazos rotos– , there was a telephone that had just been destroyed. “In the curriculum of every creator, there must be some traumas. Naturally, I have them too. One of them: having worked in a basement of the Telephone Company for ten years. Women at… is a fierce indictment against the telephone and the answering machine. It is not true that human beings communicate with each other through the telephone. The telephone only serves to show others how little interest it causes us”, commented the filmmaker. But his artistic concerns led him to direct his own films in Super 8, a very popular home format at the end of the 70s, where he was already beginning to use his bizarre and inimitable titles, such as Two whores, or a love story that ends in a wedding , Sex goes, sex comes . He even shot a feature film in Super 8, Fuck… Fuck… Fuck me, Tim , where he had Carmen Maura as the main character , who became the fetish actress of his early days.

His first professional feature film was Pepi, Luci, Bom y otras chicas del montón , which, despite its modest budget, was highly successful. Through the story of Pepi (again Maura), raped by a policeman, who asks her friends for help to take revenge on her, beating her up, Almodóvar portrayed the transgressive environment of that movement known as “la Movida”. Although technically it is a rather poor film – progressively, the filmmaker would learn the trade – his obsessions with female characters, costumbrist portraits, provocative sex and thick humor were already present. While succeeding as a filmmaker, Almodóvar formed a musical duo with his partner at the time, Fabio McNamara ., with whom he performed the most kitsch songs, such as ‘Satana SA’ and ‘I’m going to be a mom’.

During his first period, Almodóvar maintained his crazy, irreverent, grotesque and satirical style, in titles such as Laberinto de pasiones , where he worked for the first time with his favorite actor, Antonio Banderas from Malaga . His nuns in Entre tinieblas are surreal and unreal and somewhat reminiscent of Buñuel. He begins to evolve with what have I done to deserve this!!, because his drawing of a cleaner, mother of a dysfunctional family, has a dramatic background, since it deals with the loneliness of the central character, the theme that will be repeated the most in his later films. Of course, she camouflages the dramatic part of her with really hilarious characters, like the girl with powers, or the prostitute neighbor who invites the protagonist to help her by acting as a ‘voyeur’ with a client. This sequence is also very representative of La Mancha, because although it is a sordid moment, it does not have an erotic tone, but rather a tragicomic one, and the dialogues between the protagonists are endearing. The parody of advertising is also constant in the first Almodóvar, and includes on this occasion a shocking and bittersweet coffee ad (his most memorable ‘ad’ of him along with that of the mother of the Vallecas murderer,

After the thriller Matador , about a bullfighter who has been turned into a serial killer, Pedro launched the production company El Deseo –which he organized with his brother Agustín– with La ley del deseo , a film about a love triangle between homosexuals. Undoubtedly, the roundest film of his first stage was Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, also about loneliness, in this case suffered by a disgruntled voice actor, Pepa (Carmen Maura), who is desperately looking for her boyfriend, who has broken up with her, to tell him that she is pregnant. Almodóvar already masters the technique, and although the plot is a soap opera with unexpected ramifications, he narrates it with great grace, and an impeccable mastery of rhythm. The film established him internationally, as it was nominated for an Oscar for best foreign film, and for a long time there was talk of its adaptation in Hollywood.

After Tie Me Up! , a tribute to The Collector , but with a lot of humor, and more bawdy than William Wyler ‘s film , Almodóvar faces his first pure and hard drama –although he cannot avoid crazy surreal exits–, with High Heels . Distanced for a long time from Carmen Maura –who returned to work with him on Volver– , Almodóvar turned on several occasions to Victoria Abril , who on this occasion was a newscaster who is unaware that she is married to the great love of her mother, and in fact, he will try to abandon her in order to return to her. Verónica Forqué played an optimistic makeup artist in Kika, one of the director’s worst jobs, as he limited himself to accumulating his typical ‘funny jokes’, without a solid argument.

Her best purely dramatic film is La flor de mi secreto , with Marisa Paredes as a depressed writer who refuses to accept that her husband, a soldier, has completely moved away from her. Especially heartfelt is her description of her protagonist, an upper-class woman, who apparently has everything—for example, she can start writing a column in a successful newspaper when she feels like it—and yet she she feels lonely and unhappy. Is Almodóvar perhaps telling us about himself?

Accused –rightly– of describing his female characters much better than his male ones, Almodóvar tries to make amends with the failed Trembling Flesh , about an unfortunate boy, Víctor, who finds himself involved in a confrontation with two policemen. The film has a great discovery, the moment in which Javier Bardem and Liberto Rabal interrupt a violent fight to claim a goal for their team, which undoubtedly captured the masculine nature. It is also the first film that Almodóvar shoots with Penélope Cruz , in a brief role at the beginning, as the mother of the protagonist, who gives birth on a bus.

One of his older films is All About My Mother , inspired by John Cassavetes ‘s Opening Night , to such an extent that the start can be considered plagiarism. A heartfelt tribute to motherhood, among the surreal moments typical of the ‘Almodovarian’ universe, it also conveys the pain of a mother who, after losing her son in an accident, travels to Barcelona in search of the father, a guy who even ignores the existence of the boy. deceased. The film won the Oscar for best foreign-language film, although the Hollywood Academy received even better Talk to Her –about a nurse in love with a girl in a coma–, with which Almodóvar won the award for best original screenplay and was nominated as director. AfterBad Education , a fairly minor film, Almodóvar returned to good form in Volver . Penélope Cruz undoubtedly gave one of the best interpretations of her, as Raimunda, a woman who hides the corpse of her partner, murdered by her daughter, because he had tried to rape her under the influence of alcohol. Although the convoluted plot is typical of the author, it gives rise to a sincere vindication of the filmmaker’s origins, since it includes the funeral traditions and the typical houses of the town of Raimunda, which comes from La Mancha. He also vindicates her maternal love, through Raimunda’s relationship with her mother, played by a recovered Carmen Maura. For this film, Penelope Cruz was nominated for an Oscar for best actress, shortly before winning the secondary award forVicky Cristina Barcelona .

Almodóvar set the bar so high, and his cinema was so well received, that his film Los abrazos rotos was awaited with great expectations . This explains the lukewarm reception from the public and critics – with the exception of American critics – that this drama about a blind director has received, which recalls his relationship with Lena Rivero, a secretary and aspiring actress, with whom he had a passionate romance. .